The York Symphony Orchestra has planned for a year-long trip around the world of music, and their next concert will take them to Ireland and Scotland.

The Celtic Celebration concert on March 10 is their next stop on the "season-long world tour," said conductor Lawrence Golan. The concert will be held in York's Appell Center, and will feature soloist Jerry O'Sullivan on the uilleann pipes -- a traditional Irish instrument dating back to the mid-18th century.

Unlike its more famous cousin, the Highland pipes of Scotland, the uilleann pipes aren't powered by the performer blowing into them. Instead, they operate via using a small bellows attached to the instrument.

"We found that Jerry O'Sullivan is the go-to guy for Irish bagpipes," Golan said. "There's a film called 'Far and Away' that starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, with music by the king of film composers, John Williams. When they needed a piper for that film, they called Jerry O'Sullivan."

O'Sullivan's resume also includes session work for recording artists, including an appearance on a Grammy Award-winning Celtic album from the Boston Pops Orchestra, in addition to a career as a soloist. He inherited his love of Irish music from his family, some of whom were first-generation immigrants.

"My dad came to New York [from Ireland] in the '50s, and my mom's family came in the mid-1920s," O'Sullivan said. "My grandfather was from the west of Ireland, County Mayo. This was the music of his youth, traditional Irish dance music. He'd play LPs, and we were very close, I was his little buddy. And I'd sit with him and listen to the records."

After listening to recordings of the uilleann pipe, O'Sullivan finally came to own one on a visit to Ireland, where he discovered a retired police officer living down the road from his family made the instruments by hand.

The Celtic Celebration concert will feature Mendhelssons' Scottish Symphony, inspired by the composer's visit to Scotland, as well as "The Brendan Voyage" by Irish composer Sean Davey. The latter work is inspired by the tale of St. Brendan the Voyager, who supposedly sailed from Ireland to the New World in a leather boat, 900 years before Columbus.

"Each movement depicts a different part of the journey - Iceland, Newfoundland, Labrador," Golan said. "In general, the pipes depict the boat, and the orchestra depicts the environment along the way."

"It's very interesting what Sean Davey was doing," O'Sullivan said. "I think he was ahead of his time, really -- a lot of variety. It's sort of two sides of the culture. The folk music is very old, tied in with the Irish Gaelic language, and then you had the music of the Anglo-Irish families. And frequently there was a synthesis. They're both wonderful, different flavors."

"They can expect a wonderful balance between standard classical music, and something new and fresh and exciting that they've never heard before," Golan said. "I think it's a wonderful balance between the two, and they can expect to see the best of both worlds."